Turning up the heat in the Underhive, my new Goliath champions, Fraggorn Wrenchshouter, and Zaktarg Fragmaker are now complete and ready for action. With the kit’s coolest weapons options – including the controversial krumper (is its range too much of a problem?), they’re now ready to join the rest of the gang. Let’s take a look at the two big boys of the Jagged Aggressors gang.

Fraggorn is a true monster, hefting the beast of a weapon that is the krumper, along with an oh-so-useful combat knife strapped to his back. He’s a great looking mini, with that teeny-tiny cigar hanging from his lips, and a very nonchalant stance, he looks like a real menace. He was a fun miniature to work on, and that weapon does look super cool, even if its very short range might prove problematic in a game that isn’t using a zone mortalis-style setting. But hey, sometimes the rule of cool beats all.

The cigar wasn’t too much of a problem – I know there are a lot of stories about people losing that piece, but if you clip it (gently) and assemble it straight away, it’s really not an issue. And it was fun to get the colours right on that – you can’t really see it on the photos here, but I think I nailed the burning end’s oranges and greys pretty well. The combat blade is from the Betrayal At Calth box, and it’s nice and oversized which is perfect for this Goliath. And like all the others, he’s of course dressed in those utilitarian greys and browns.

My favourite weapon in the whole Goliath kit has to be the Renderizer, and Zaktarg Fragmaker is wielding it with a grin. That axe would look amazing on a Chaos champion too, so I may save one to add into another army or onto a character at some point in the future. I really like the grinning face, and while you can’t quite spot it in these shots, I gave this champion silver teeth with a bloody red wash around them, just to make it extra menacing.

I gave him a couple of grenades – some more traditional frag grenades instead of the huge stick-bombs. They’re a cool bit, but I just couldn’t make them fit on this model in a way that looked good. I also added some snake chain to the base to represent some sort of power cable. I’m going to enjoy watching this chap pulverising his way across the battlefield.

And all of that leaves me with one more gang member to go before the Jagged Aggressors are ready for their first campaign. I’ve put the first few licks of paint onto my leader already, so stay tuned for him – he’ll be appearing on this blog soon. So with all of that done, I shall leave you to enjoy your own painting and modelling efforts. My your brushes never lose their points, and your paint pots never dry out. Onwards!

A few people have asked me how I put painted the trousers on my Goliath gangers. They’re in a worn leather style that’s perfect for coats, cloaks and more, especially if you don’t want to do shiny black or clean brown leather. So, I’ve put together a very quick, basic tutorial for these that you can use as a reference. Here goes…

Step 1: Undercoat – Rhinox Hide

The Rhinox Hide spray is perfect for undercoating Necromunda miniatures. It’s a nice solid colour that can lend plenty of depth. I sprayed up all of my gangers with this before starting.

Step 2: Basing – More Rhinox Hide

At the moment, you’re establishing a nice, uneven but matching base and while the spray is perfect for an overall undercoat, it is a tad darker and more matt than the Rhinox Hide that comes from the pot. Add the paint from the bottle to the areas that would get hit by light, but don’t be too neat with it – we want plenty of unevenness here.

Step 3: Wash – Agrax Earthshade

The paint my spellcheck likes the least, add an all over coat. Be a little more liberal with this than you’d usually be with a wash, but only a little.

Step 4: Detail – Rhinox Hide / XV-88 (1:1 Blend)

Here, you’re going to be doing a swirly, dry-brushing sort of action across the trousers. You only need a light touch, very little water (if any – the cardinal sin!) in your paint, and very little on your brush. So yeah, I could have just said drybrushing. I don’t know why I didn’t. I woke up at 4am today and listened to a disappointing cricket match so bear with me. Do that, here, and you’ll be good.

Step 5: Detail – XV-88

Now, you want to do similar to last time. Ensure you catch the raised areas and aim for the higher light catching parts again, but be more conservative with this one. Very dry drybrushing called for. And keep it a bit uneven too.

Step 6: Wash – Seraphim Sepia

Cover the whole lot in Seraphim Sepia. And you’re done! Let it dry and soon, it will look like this:

Well, the weapons and rest of the miniature won’t magically change into something completely different, but your mini’s trousers will look like they’re made from old, worn leather. Or cloak, hat, coat – whatever you’ve used this technique on.

I’m getting through my Goliath gang now, so expect more pictures of those guys soon. I hope you found this post useful, and that your own painting projects are coming along as you’d hoped or better. Onwards!

My Goliath Gang for Necromunda is up and running, and the first three gangers are done. Say hello to Hulkras, Smargrill and Porgsmash of the Jagged Aggressors. Their names come straight from my name generator, and while I’m not the biggest fan of “Porgsmash”, I’ll stick to them for the rest of the project. Let’s take a closer look-see.

Being Goliath, and having a name like Jagged Aggressors, I wanted these guys to have a thoroughly utilitarian, industrial feel to them. Therefore, the colours are browns and greys, and there’s plenty of weathering too. In fact, their rusted armour reflects the rusted walkways that they’re standing on – as it was Goliaths that probably made those walkways in the first place.

Smargrill is the specialist of the gang and the first guy that I painted. He’s wielding that lovely grenade launcher and a brute cleaver – I really think it’s key for each Goliath to have a good close combat option as that’s where their strength really lies, but they need brutal ranged weapons to help get them there. It’s an important balance to get right. I’m really happy with the worn leather look on the trousers of all of these minis, and it was really fun to go a bit more over-the-top with the rust and verdigris. Normally I have to be quite restrained with the rust but with this lot, I let the paint brush have some fun.

Hulkras is next up, and his Spud Jacker shows how far I went with the rusting and weathering. I figured the Goliaths would put older tools to work as weapons as newer, better kept kit would be needed in the foundries. It’s a great looking bit though – GW did a great job with that. And in the top picture, you can see he has the jagged whitish line on his leg plate. This is the symbol of the gang, but I didn’t want to overuse it – these guys are all function first, and fancy details a distant second.

And here we have Porgsmash. If you think the gun looks a little bit different, that’s because it’s from the Ork grot kit. Turns out Goliaths and grots have a pretty similar taste in firearms. Actually, the one criticism I’d have of these kits is that the options don’t give you quite enough flexibility. Some weapons only appear on left hands, others on right hands. A bit limiting if you’re not too comfortable converting things. But other than that, it’s a cracking set of sprues and I’m loving this project.

Those are my gangers. Initially, I’m just building a six man gang as they’ll be going into a campaign in the new year, and I want to have options further down the line, especially if Forge World are going to be releasing some weapons sprues later on. Also, I want to get on to those Escher ladies at some point in the not too distant future.

Next up for me will be my Champions so expect those as the next painted pieces from me. I hope you enjoyed checking this lot out. Oh, and I should say that I tried the rainbow mohawk look for them, but it didn’t quite suit, whereas the red hair looks a lot better. But that’s enough from me. I hope you’re enjoying your painting as much as I am enjoying mine. Onwards!

One of the real attractions of Necromunda, is the idea of campaigns. Yes, the Underhive boxed game is fun (I’ve had a couple of play throughs now and it is a genuinely enjoyable game), but it’s not the big draw for me. I, like so many of you, want to create a deep dark world for my gangs to run through, fight through and interact with. I want their homes, hovels, workshops, mines and more to be fleshed out, built up and given as much personality as the gangers themselves.

I will be playing through a campaign in the new year with my good ol’ buddy, Henry whose Esher gang are coming along rather wonderfully, as I struggle to find the time to work on my Goliaths. But more on the minis later. We’re just going to be doing a small, two player campaign, but I want it to have as much of a narrative as possible. I want to create the atmosphere, and give our little slice of the Underhive, on the borders of our gangs’ territories some real personality.

So, how do we start doing this? Well, as with so many things, the name can help to craft the identity of an area. And seeing as this blog may as well be called the ‘Sci Fi Name Generator Blog’ these days, I cracked open the spreadsheets yet again, and began to craft something a bit different.

This name generator helps you to name the areas of your own Underhive realm. Essentially, you get your trusty D6s out and roll on the D66 tables below for your random areas. Use one or two descriptors (I find one usually does, but mix it up as much as you like), and one of the Area Types. Add “The” before the name if it makes it sound better (some do, some don’t), and enjoy! Use it how you see fit, and there’s no harm in rerolling things – not everything sounds great so you enjoy it as you want to.

Now, for gang specific areas – perhaps where your gangs are starting off, you can use the Gang Specific Area types. Just a D6 for each of these, and add the descriptors you roll/like.

Define how many areas you need/want, and make a little map for your own reference. You can draw this, make the areas whatever shape you’d like, and create your world. In the below example, I’ve just taken an image (it’s actually the industrial dockside area of Antwerp, Belgium, taken from Google maps satellite view and grey-scaled) and used a basic image editor to create this:

And straight away, the Underhive starts to come to life. The Lightless Stores are a particularly dark area of ancient, corroded storage containers, and sheds long abandoned and left. to the perpetual night. The Insect Stacks are bug-ridden, and full of carnivorous beasties of the invertebrate variety, while Golden Alley is a somewhat ironic name – a deal went down there long ago that made one man very rich and a lot of others very dead… And The Broken Tunnels lead to the rest of the Underhive, though they are full of pitfalls, rusted holes and treacherous gaps that have claimed many a ganger, and more dangers than you could imagine.

This is just a small campaign version played between two players, but you can go as big as you like:

Create your own slice of the Underhive and give it all the personality you can. You can even tailor your boards to match the names on the map (as much as your terrain stash and budget will allow of course). I hope you get some use out of it all and enjoy playing around with it – I’ve had a lot of fun building it up actually – almost more than the gang name generators.

On a different note, I wanted to alert you to the fact that Heresy And Heroes is on Instagram – you can find my account right here. It’s not just miniatures; you’ll be treated to life drawing efforts (along with other doodles), random shots of London, my ugly mug and a lot of pubs too. But if you want to follow me on there, you can keep up to date with my miniatures efforts in a different way.

As you can see, my first Goliath is now done. I’ve not had a chance to properly photograph the first member of the Jagged Aggressors yet, but if you follow the Instagram Account, you’ll see when I do. Or of course, you can just keep your eyes on the blog. I hope you have a great weekend, and some fun gaming and painting times. Onwards!

The news from the Warhammer 40,000 Open Day is in and we’ve got a new gang to ogle for Necromunda. To pretty much no-one’s surprise, the Orlock gang will be appearing next with a full plastic kit. There was one interesting surprise though. The Orlocks have gone… well, hipster.

In an earlier post, I joked a little about how the Orlock gang bore some resemblance to characters like John Rambo. Double denim and bandanas – that sort of look. Well, such assertions can’t be made of the new Orlock gang (though they might still be rocking double denim but in a slightly more interesting way) who look far more like the sort of folk you see hanging around Shoreditch or Brixton, drinking oat-milk flat whites while talking about bands you’re not cool enough to know about as they play with their beards. If you’re not from the UK, you’ll surely have your own havens for people who like to ride old-timey bicycles, wear clothes that are so uncool they’re cool, and have their millionaire daddies buy them grotty flats in communities that they ruin.

In a true stroke of originality from GW, this look has been blended with that of ‘industrial miner’. And I have to say that I really like it. The Orlocks now have much more of an identity than they ever did, just going by looks alone, and the House of Iron have some very fancy toys to play with (including perhaps the best looking powerfist I’ve ever seen). The harpoon gun is pretty darn sexy too, even if the guy carrying it bears a striking resemblance to myself. Good looking mini, that. In fact the other chap in the below picture looks very much like Henry South from 4gotowar.com which is also awesome (somewhat because I’ll be able to shoot him without going to prison – Sorry, Henry).

This is really showing off how far the designers and standards have come at GW HQ. That’s in no way a knock to the people who designed the original gangs (new designers are standing on their shoulders of course), but these guys no longer look like ‘just blokes’ and have some real personality and a lot of great details. And whereas the Goliaths and Eschers were updates to established cool identities, these Orlock chaps are a true reinvention. Based on these guys, I can’t wait to see more gangs appear throughout 2018.

These deep-down hipsters will be hitting the Underhive boards in early 2018, but for those of you either playing legacy gangs or already planning out how to field these mooks, I’ve got some name generators for you.

For your gang name, it’s the traditional initials game. First initial and Surname initial. That gives me The Jack-Hammer Apes which I rather like. There’s a general fist/miner/street-gang sort of theme to this. Think On The Waterfront meets The Warriors meets 40K. Even with their new look, I can’t shake the idea that these guys would say things like “Yous guys” while calling people “jabronies”. I know I would if I thought I could actually pull it off.

And now for your gang members. As with last time, you can use this however you like. I’ve been using the Name 1 columns to give me my basic ganger names (though with this one, sometimes I’ve just been using the first column, and sometimes both – the name length gives some nice variance), Name 1 and Name 2 columns for my champs, and the whole lot to give my leader a name. But you do you – make it work however you can or want to. D66 and there’s no worries about rerolling if you don’t like what you got.

And there you have it. Will I be buying these guys when they appear in early 2018? You better believe I will be. I’m currently working on my Goliath gang but I’m doing a starting-a-campaign sized gang (6 guys) so I should have some painted things to show off soon. Until then, happy painting. Onwards!

What’s a Slaaneshi Dark Mech Magos to do when he’s hunting for parts and archeotech in the depths of the Underhive and doesn’t want to carry everything himself? Well, he could summon a daemonic steed, trap it in the mortal realm, and use it to carry his bags. That’s exactly what my Magos has done, and this is his Slaaneshi Pack Mule.

Now, you can’t have your pack mule shifting back to the warp every five minutes – you’d lose all of your stuff. So our Magos here installed some sort of fancy inhibitor chip to stop his seeker from heading back to the warp. The downside of this is that unlike other daemons who can be “killed” go back to the warp, and then come back with all their bits intact, our steed can’t do that. So when he lost his leg, our Magos had to make him a new one. That’s my fluff, and I’m sticking to it.

So, that’s what inspired me to create the little creation that you see here, to join my Slaaneshi warband that I am indeed looking forward to trying them all out in some custom games of Necromunda.

The leg took most of the time to make. There are a lot of bits involved there; too many to mention them all. The thigh though is actually from an Eldar Wraithlord’s scatter laser – it’s funny how you find these parts. All of the packs and bags on its back are green stuff, filled with bits again from various kits, and that lovely servo skull too. There’s also the wire running down the neck which is snake chain, and a torch/light has replaced one of the jaw-horns. As simple as that!

In terms of the paint job, it’s pretty traditional Slaanesh really. Lots of pinks and purples, though I’m happy with how the scales turned out. Dark Reaper and Pink Horror give the snakeskin pattern, and after some washes and highlights, I finished it off with a gloss coat which gives it that slimy-not-slimy look that snakes have.

Well, he’s a bit different anyway. Another mad creation. Not sure about the rules for him yet. I think his gammy leg should make him slower than the lightning fast seekers we’re used to. And maybe people could give up shooting attacks if they’re within 1″ of this guy can throw an object from the packs on his back instead. They range from harmless tin cans to destroyer weapons that have been picked up by the Magos. I’ll work on that. Also, I think I’ll call him Binky.

And he fits in quite nicely with the rest of my small team of Dark Mech Deviants. What’s more, I think I’ve nailed worn leather. I’m really happy with how those packs look. Binky was a lot of fun to work on.

Well, we’re just a couple of days away from Necromunda being released so expect more Underhive goodness next week and for the near future. Happy painting all. Onwards!

“Long ago, in the distant yesterdays of Necromunda now long forgotten, a man lived among the high spires. His name too has slipped far from memory, but we know that he was vain. The finest silks imported from across the galaxy he was adorned in, and he was attended by servitors constructed on Mars itself. He even wore a jewel said to contain the soul of a great Eldar leader.

His stock was so high among the nobility of Hive Primus that he was invited to all of the most exclusive of engagements, from high table lunches with the ruling family heads, to opulent orgies held at the most enlightened establishments. All fawned over him, and many swore that wherever he walked, golden butterflies would rise from his footsteps.

So decadent were his ways, and so beautiful his features, that the warp itself stirred and the whispers of Slaanesh carried into his mind night after night. She promised him every ecstasy he could possibly dream of, and every treasure that the galaxy could spare. And so he fell to her seductions. He pledged his soul so that he could be more beautiful, and so that he could experience the pleasures the Dark Prince offered.

For years he did just this. Secretly he prayed for to the Young God, and so he kept his beauty which became even more intense, and he experienced thrills and delights such as no mortal should ever partake in. But just as he deceived so many around him, he also worked to deceive Slaanesh herself. Through his contacts within the Aeldari traders that visited Hive Primus, he procured a method to keep his soul within a gemstone, and cheat the goddess of her prize.

He enjoyed her gifts for thirty years and thirty days, praying to her and lying to her in tandem. But gods are not so easily fooled, and when he came to Slaanesh in the dark of night and told her that he had no intention of honouring their deal, She Who Thirsts was well prepared, for the eyes of the warp see all. She snatched the jewel containing his soul from about his throat and hurled into the dark depths of the Underhive. And how she cursed him, blinding him so that he could not see anything of beauty ever again, while his treacherous blood perpetually poured from his unseeing eyes.

It was thought that a madness had taken him. Those around him listened to his insane tales of Gods in the night, and saw the beauty slip from his features as his soul slipped deeper into the toxic pools of the sump. After being briefly committed, when his credits ran dry he was thrown to the Underhive. He stumbles blindly through the shadows, crying waterfalls of blood without end, as he searches the noxious muck of the sump for his soul. Perhaps it was here that his mind mutated, for he developed unwieldy and unfocussed psychic powers that kept him safe amongst the Hive’s scum and gang warriors. Or perhaps Slaanesh gave him this last gift so that he would be protected, and thus suffer even longer.

Some find him here still. Weeping his sanguine tears as he screams and cries into the darkness beneath the world. Ever lost, and ever alone, the Old Man Of The Sump still seeks his soul in the unwaters of this hellish realm. And from the darkness, on the very edge of hearing, you can hear the cackling of a delighted dark God.”

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There you have it. My Wyrd, The Old Man Of The Sump is done. A composite of various kits, and painted in a bit of Blanchitsu style, this guy can be hired by any gang (when the rules for such turn up) and I’m looking forward to seeing him stumbling blindly around some custom scenarios, firing off psychic powers at any and all comers as he searches for his soul.

I had a load of fun working on this. The head (which comes from a Skaven chieftain’s banner pole) has those great bulbous eyes and that big beard, and it just needed to be on something. I’ve had it for years and I just got the idea to this and it worked! This is what I was saying about Necromunda in one of my last posts – you get the chance to create theses stories like the one above, and it’s a tonne of fun to do so.

Anyway, I hope you like him too. Stay tuned for more Necromunda bits and pieces. Here’s one final rear shot, and until next time, I shall wish you happy painting. Onwards!